Padres new general manager working quickly to turn things around

San Diego Padres general manager A.J. Preller gets a good laugh while talking in the dugout prior to the Padres' home opener. (Lenny Ignelzi, AP)

A.J. Preller was a fraternity brother and roommate of Jon Daniels when the two attended Cornell, so when Daniels became the Rangers' baseball head in 2003, he soon brought his old friend in to run the team's international and pro scouting.

It's always good to know the right person, no matter what business you're in, but Preller is proving he wasn't just a product of baseball's time-honored buddy system.

Advertisement

After working his way up to assistant general manager under Daniels, Preller was hired last summer as the Padres' GM, replacing Josh Byrnes, who replaced Jed Hoyer, now the Cubs' GM.

Preller quickly overhauled the roster like he was working a booth on Maxwell Street. He acquired Matt Kemp, Justin Upton, WilMyers, Derek Norris and Will Middlebrooks during a memorable binge in December, signed free agent James Shields for $75 million before the start of spring training and then pulled off a shocking deal before the season opener that brought in Braves closer Craig Kimbrel.

Advertisement

"That's what he does," Padres manager Bud Black said. "He's diligent, he's tireless, has a tremendous passion for his job. He just stays at it."

Losing prospects like top-rated pitcher Matt Wisler; right-hander Jesse Hahn, who went 7-4 with a 3.07 ERA as a rookie; and left-hander Max Fried, the seventh pick of the 2012 draft, may have depleted the farm system. But the Padres obviously are going for it now and Preller isn't too concerned about the future.

"I think obviously coming off the team last year, we needed to add a lot to the offensive end," Preller said. "Hopefully we did it."

Perhaps Preller's biggest risk is the outfield of Upton in left, Kemp in right and Myers in center. Suffice to say it's not exactly a Gold Glove trio. Myers started only six games in center in his rookie season for the Rays in 2013 and none last year. Preller said Myers would get "first crack" at center, and Myers handled it flawlessly in the Padres' first four games.

The Padres, who play the Cubs next weekend at Wrigley Field, already are acting like upstarts.

On Thursday night in the home opener against the Giants, Norris was upset when Giants outfielder Angel Pagan picked up a piece of chewed gum and tossed it away. The gum somehow landed near Norris' feet, and the two began jawing at each other, which led to more jawing between Kimbrel and Pagan.

If it all works out for Preller, this could be the piece of gum that changed the landscape in the National League West.

The Padres are in a small market, but they're acting like a big-market team, with a $126 million payroll and room to add more. They're hoping to catch some of the magic the Royals found last October.

"There are years when teams you don't expect flourish," Black said. "The Royals had been poised for this. They had been talking about their core for a couple of years. … We saw that with (the Rays) in 2008, some teams you might not expect end up playing good baseball and getting in (the playoffs).

"You never know how a year will play out. In 2010, no one expected us to do well and we took it to the last day of the season. The key is to get into the playoffs. … The Royals, what they did, makes other clubs very hopeful, that hey, the same thing can happen to them."

Advertisement

Picking up the pace: The new pace of game rules seemed to work well in the first five days of the season, with a lot of games finishing in less than three hours.

"We've been about 10 minutes down from where we were last year," Commissioner Rob Manfred said Friday in an interview on CNBC. "It's not so much — 3:02 was the average game time last year. When we sat around and talked about (the changes), it was not that we wanted to go from 3:02 to 2:50 or 2:45 or so. It was we wanted the fans to look at the game and say it moved a little more crisply and the slow moments were shorter."

Wednesday's White Sox-Royals game clocked in at 2:37, even with a five-minute delay because the phones weren't working between the Sox dugout and the coach monitoring instant replay in the Sox clubhouse.

Stat of the week: Indians starters Corey Kluber, Carlos Carrasco and Trevor Bauer combined for 28 strikeouts in 192/3 innings in their opening three-game series against the Astros, an average of 12.8 strikeouts per nine innings. The Astros scored two runs on six hits off the three starters.

The quote: Cardinals starter Adam Wainwright on pitching against the Cubs in the opener Sunday night at Wrigley Field: "I love playing in atmospheres like that. The crowd was buzzing like it was the World Series. It was really awesome. I felt privileged to be out there pitching in front of it."